The Girl With the Painted Face (12 page)

And Beppe… Sofia watches Beppe settle himself with unselfconscious ease; taking off his doublet, he folds it into a rough pillow; then, wrapping his own blanket around himself, he rubs his face with both palms and stretches. Curling like a cat, he closes his eyes.

A last red-glowing branch fizzles and flares before it sinks into the ashes; at its sudden hissing light, Beppe opens his eyes again. He catches sight of Sofia still looking at him and smiles again. Feeling the colour rise in her face, she pulls the blanket up around her neck. The corners of Beppe’s mouth remain upturned after he closes his eyes once more, head pillowed on one hand; Sofia watches him until the last ember cools and the light dies completely and she can see him no longer.

9

Sebastiano da Correggio looks down with distaste at where Angelo has sprawled across the table, his head on his arms. He is deeply asleep, his perfectly proportioned face oddly childlike in its utter relaxation, though the sight of it evokes no tender feelings in da Correggio.

‘For God’s sake, wake up, you bastard,’ he mutters. ‘Maddalena will be here any minute, and I want you gone.’

He shakes Angelo’s shoulder, but Angelo just murmurs, and tucks his head more comfortably into the crook of his elbow, showing no sign of waking. Rolling his eyes, and feeling his jaw tense with the effort of not hitting his companion, Sebastiano da Correggio glances at the far end of the table. The three empty glasses stand next to the bottles of the dark syrup. One glass has tipped over and lies on its side in a pooled puddle of grappa.

‘I hope to God you haven’t had too much,’ he says through gritted teeth. ‘I don’t want to have to deal with a damned corpse.’ He stares down at Angelo for several seconds. ‘And it’s bloody cold in here now that damned fire’s gone out.’

He opens a wooden chest and pulls from it an intricately slashed and embroidered woollen doublet. Shrugging it on, he buckles a belt around his waist and tucks into this a short-bladed knife with a prettily jewelled handle; then, closing the lid of the chest, he sits down upon it. A pair of boots lies untidily next to the chest; these he pulls on, swearing under his breath as one catches around his heel. Standing, he stamps that foot hard down into the boot.

At the sound of the stamp, Angelo groans and shifts position, but he does not wake. Sebastiano da Correggio swears. He shakes Angelo again, with no effect. Grabbing a handful of Angelo’s hair, he turns the sleeping face up towards him. Angelo’s eyes open slightly, showing only a thin line of white, and his lips part, revealing even, white teeth and the gleam of his tongue. A thin line of spittle slides from the corner of his mouth.

‘
Merda!
’ Sebastiano says, dropping Angelo’s head so that it slumps back onto his arms. ‘You bastard, Bagnacavallo – she’ll be here any moment now and you’re cluttering the bloody place up like a fucking pile of laudanum-soaked laundry. Being one of the very first to realize the delightfully intoxicating potential of one of the newest and most effective relievers of pain in Italy looks set to make me a great deal of money, Bagnacavallo, once word starts to spread. If you swallow too much of it – greedy bastard that you are – and go and die on me, my reputation will be badly tarnished, so don’t bloody do it.’

He pauses a moment, and a muscle in his jaw twitches. He shakes his head. ‘Do you know what? This is the last time,’ he says. ‘You can get it for yourself if you want more – I have better things to do than play broker with you. You self-indulgent little pretty boy.’ He kicks the leg of Angelo’s chair irritably. ‘That’s the last time I believe your declarations of solvency. And you can fucking well pay me what you owe before your bloody troupe leaves the city or I’m having the bottles back. In fact…’

He grabs the grappa and all the unopened brown bottles, leaving just the single three-quarters-empty one, and strides out of the
sala
,
climbing the stairs two at a time to the bedchamber. He will just have to bring Maddalena straight up here – the fire is dead and the
sala
is cold, after all, so she is unlikely to object. Putting the grappa and the laudanum down on a table near the bed, he takes another couple of small glasses from a shelf and places them next to the two bottles.

A knock at the front door echo-cracks into the silence of the house.

Crossing the room to the window, da Correggio cups his hands around his eyes and, face pressed to the glass, peers down to the street below: he can just make out the top of Maddalena’s silk-swathed head. He runs downstairs. Even as he opens the door, she slips inside, sliding her arms up around his neck and starting to kiss him before he can say a word. Her mouth is warm and inviting, and she presses herself against him, pulling him in close, murmuring incoherently through her kisses. The heavy gold stitchery on her sleeves scratches against his neck.

‘I thought…’ she says, between kisses, ‘… I thought… you might not want to see me.’

‘Come upstairs.’

‘I’ve missed you… so much. Paolo has been so… mmm… boring and miserable… and I’ve longed to see you and…’

‘Come upstairs,’ Sebastiano da Correggio says again.

Maddalena pulls back from him. ‘How long do we have?’

A flash of irritation. ‘That’s rather up to you, is it not? How likely is it that the eminent Signor di Maccio will notice his wife’s absence
this
time?’

Maddalena shakes her head. ‘He won’t know I’ve gone. He was fast asleep when I left the house.’ She pauses. ‘He always sleeps soundly after —’ She sucks in a sharp breath and breaks off, catching her lip between her teeth.

Sebastiano sees colour rise in her cheeks and feels the familiar anger swell in his chest. ‘Have you just come from his bed?’ he says in a voice like a gob of spit. ‘I hate the thought of you doing that.’

Maddalena’s eyes widen and she takes a further step away from him. ‘
Caro
, he
is
my husband, after all.’

Da Correggio hears a catch in her voice.

‘It was a chair, not the bed, anyway. You know he can’t… can’t… get it up any more, but he does seem to like…’ Running the tip of her tongue over her lips, she hesitates. ‘Well, apart from making me feel slightly sick, a quick
pompino
doesn’t take too much effort. And if it pleases him, and gives us a few hours to spend together, then can you not allow me to…?’

The vulgarity is shocking in her mouth, but even the thought of her performing that whore’s act makes him greedy for her. He looks at where her breasts are pushing up against the top edge of her bodice, imagining with an unpleasant twist of his guts Paolo di Maccio’s bony old hands fingering them, and says coldly, ‘I don’t like to feel I’m trespassing on damp ground that still bears the proprietor’s footprints.’

‘I only do it for you – you know that. To give us time. God, having that limp and flaccid old slug twitching away in my mouth makes me feel quite ill! I wouldn’t do it by choice, would I? Do you want me to wash first? I will if you want.’

‘Don’t bother – don’t waste the time we have. Come with me. We’ll go straight to bed.’

‘Has it been delivered?’ Her voice is trembling.

‘Yes. You can have some as soon as we’ve finished. Not before – I don’t want you falling asleep.’

Sebastiano da Correggio only just hears Maddalena’s soft sigh of relief. He takes her wrist – small as a child’s within his grasp – and leads her back up past the
sala
, straight up to the front bedchamber. It’s dark: no fire or candle lights the room; but the shutters are unfastened, and there is just enough light to see.

Sebastiano begins to unfasten Maddalena’s laces, all but pulling her off balance in his haste. He jerks the sleeves from her shoulders, pushing the dress down so that it puddles around her knees in great creased swags. She steps out of the skirts and Sebastiano crouches to grasp the hem of her shift. She puts her arms up as he tugs the chemise over her head. She wears no other undergarments. The grey light from the window picks out the curves of her body, highlighting the rounded outlines of shoulders and breasts, the swell of her buttocks; she looks, Sebastiano thinks, like a voluptuous ghost. His fingers go to the laces of his doublet, but then he stops.

He likes it when he is dressed and Maddalena is not.

‘Go and stand in the light,’ he says, and, without a word, Maddalena crosses to the far side of the room, where the light lies in a distorted, pewter-coloured square on the wooden boards. She stands in the centre of the square, holds her arms high above her head and turns slowly as he watches.

Maddalena knows Sebastiano likes to watch her caress her own body. Head back, mouth slightly open, she moves her hands over and around her shoulders, arms and breasts, then, as her fingers stroke across the skin of her belly, she feels again that small domed swelling beneath the skin – hardly more than a vague denseness of flesh – which has risen and rounded there over the past week or two. Turning away from Sebastiano’s fixed gaze, she arches her back and slides her hands over her buttocks.

She must at all costs keep him from noticing the inevitable, for as long as possible. A sick feeling of dread rises in her throat as she imagines how he will react when he finally discovers the truth – and she pictures her impotent husband hearing the same news. There is no doubt, after all, that it is Sebastiano’s child. Facing him once more, she sees that he has seated himself on the carved chest at the end of the bed.

‘Here!’ he says. ‘Come here. Since you began the evening with a cock in your mouth, you little whore, why don’t we call that a rehearsal? And now you can perform. Show me what you’ve learned.’

She moves away from the square of light to stand in front of him, and he takes her hands. Tugging downwards, he pulls her into a crouch in front of him, between his splayed knees. She reaches for the fastening of his breeches; her mind is on the little bottle on the table and she is grateful for the darkness.

Several hours later, Angelo da Bagnacavallo stands in the street looking up at the dark bulk of da Correggio’s house. A wave of nauseous anger swirls down through him. Straightening the neck of his doublet, he runs a hooked forefinger around inside the collar, pulling it loose; the single part-empty bottle he has been allowed –
allowed!
– to take with him shifts against his thigh inside the pocket of his breeches, and he puts a hand into the pocket to steady it. His fingers toy with the protruding edges of the cork.

Oh, so you’ve decided to grace us with your presence after – what – seven hours, have you?
Da Correggio’s sneering voice is as clear in his head as it was in the
sala
a moment ago.
I’ve been thinking,
he says.
I’ve been thinking – seeing that you tell me you are unable to pay for them just now, that perhaps I should hold back a couple of the bottles. We can discuss what to do with them at Franceschina in a few weeks. Hopefully, you’ll have the
scudi
by then.

Angelo hawks and spits; the gob of spittle lands in the dust and is trodden under his next step as he turns to leave the house. ‘You bastard, Correggio,’ he mutters. ‘You bloody bastard. Who the hell do you think you are? One bottle! And it’s not even full! I’d have paid – you know I’d have paid. I’ve never let you down before.’

He almost believes his own untruth.

The dawn is still more than an hour off and the streets of Bologna are softly dark. Not having thought to bring a lantern, Angelo’s progress towards the piazza where they performed yesterday – where he left the troupe – is tentative, running a hand along the front walls of houses, eyes stretched wide, placing his feet carefully. As so often happens after a dose, his thoughts are jagged, fractured, fragmented; they whirl unchecked around his head like scraps of rubbish in a sudden breeze: da Correggio’s sneering face; a glimpse of a woman on the stairs as he left just now; the pretty girl in the ragged dress after the show; the proprietorial expression on Beppe’s face as he looked at her. God – that girl! He all but promised her that he would be joining her for the meal this evening. Judging by the colour in her cheeks as she looked at him, he has a chance with her – if bloody Beppe doesn’t get in there first. As he contemplates this possibility, he finds that he is unsure whether or not the resultant swirl of anger he feels is at the thought of losing the girl, or of Beppe gaining her.

Heading back towards the Piazza di Porta Ravegnana, he walks for half an hour or more, and by the time he reaches the piazza, there is a glimmer of silver between the buildings; although it is still no more than half light, Angelo can see quite clearly that the stage has gone – the piazza is empty. The horses and wagons are nowhere to be seen.

The troupe has left.

A scrawny dog lopes out from between two pilasters and sniffs the air; after pissing up against a pillar it disappears.

Other than this, the square is quite deserted.

Angelo stands in the middle of the piazza, staring stupidly around him. Where the hell are they? The whirling-rubbish thoughts spiral more tightly and a general sense of ill usage begins to overwhelm him – da Correggio’s condescending presumption; the Coraggiosi’s continual dismissal of his abilities; his father’s refusal to give him any more money – the injustice of his situation is intolerable.